Scientific Evidence Not A Factor In Decisions To Ignore IPCC Global Warming Threat.

There is a conundrum that requires analysis. Polls show people continue to put dealing with global warming due to human CO2 near the bottom of their list of concerns (Figure 1). Meanwhile, CO2 reduction continues to dominate government policies, remains central for mainstream media, is used to justify wasting billions on completely unnecessary mitigation programs every year; not to mention the threat of national and international carbon taxes.

Figure 1 US people’s priorities.

Consider the disconnect between the evidence and the actions. Skeptics provide extensive, compelling scientific evidence that human produced CO2 is not causing global warming or climate change. Every prediction (projection) made by the IPCC since their first Report in 1990 was wrong, yet policies, practices, and promotions for CO2 (carbon) reduction dominate politics and society; buy a car because it produces less CO2. Clearly, the deceptive IPCC science was created with the belief that the end justifies the means. Was ‘the end’ identified as “the cause” in the leaked Climatic Research Unit (CRU) emails and the method confirmed by the paper “Information Manipulation and Climate Agreements’? It is all succinctly summarized in the phrase, “noble cause corruption”identified by WUWT.

The IPCC retain their credibility as the mainstream media report their latest hype that it is worse than we thought and you better act immediately. Their March 31, 2014 Press release headline says, “Responses will face challenges with high warming of the climate.” Vincente Barros, Co-Chair of Working Group II said,

We live in an era of man-made climate change in many cases, we are not prepared for the climate related risks that we already face. Investments and better preparation can pay dividends both for the present for the future.

It hasn’t warmed for 17 years. Everywhere that “investments and preparation” were applied they’ve failed miserably. The classic example is the Canadian Province of Ontario. Maurice Strong became Chairman of Ontario Hydro, a state monopoly of energy production, in 1992: the same year he introduced the political and science agenda of the IPCC at Rio 92. He applied that agenda to Ontario. It is an ongoing disaster.

Despite this, the IPCC push their agenda and governments continue to act to reduce CO2. For example, this press release from the European Investment Bank says, Low carbon energy projects to benefit from EUR 2 billion funding. To deal with the failures of “going green” Western governments, still wanting to appear green, justify abandoning alternate energies and returning to coal by saying energy and jobs are more important in the short term. They don’t say; we are doing it because it is unsupported by the science or because every prediction or projection made by the IPCC was wrong, which alone is sufficient reason.

Scientific Theory is Generally Irrelevant To People and Policy

Why is the science ignored? Sometimes it appears that topics and debates on such websites as WUWT are the modern equivalent of the medieval online casino debate about how many angels on the head of a pin. They are of intense interest and considered of great importance to the participants, but of no consequence to most people, partly because they don’t understand them, but mostly because they don’t understand how they’re affected.

Maybe the answer is in the survey that found 25 percent of Americans think the Sun goes round the Earth. Americans are not alone in this belief as surveys show Europeans and Asians have higher percentages. The truth is it is of no consequence to most as long as it rises and sets. Similarly, Newton and gravity are of no consequence as long as people don’t fall off the Earth. Science only impinged on most people when Darwin inferred they descended from apes. Implications of that assertion still reverberate through society.

An outgrowth of Darwin’s theory is that humans are animals responsive to environmental change. Apparently this breaks down when humans change from a passive to an active role in nature, surely a natural evolution. Some, like National Park Service research biologist David Graber see this in the extreme when he said:

“Human happiness, and certainly human fecundity, are not as important as a wild and healthy planet. I know social scientists who remind me that people are part of nature, but it isn’t true. Somewhere along the line – at about a billion years ago – we quit the contract and became a cancer. We have become a plague upon ourselves and upon the Earth. It is cosmically unlikely that the developed world will choose to end its orgy of fossil energy consumption, and the Third World its suicidal consumption of landscape. Until such time as Homo Sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.”

Is this the same virus that Prince Phillip wants to be reincarnated as to dramatically reduce human population? Fine, if they start with monarchs and all associates. Why are human developments such as industry and science, the target of Rio 92 and the IPCC, not considered natural evolution? How do people accept Darwin and not consider modern industrial and technological development part of evolution?

AGW theory has implications and threats for everybody, which is why it was chosen. As the Club of Rome noted in The First Global Revolution (1993)

“The common enemy of humanity is man. In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill.”

(my emphasis)

Global warming had three major advantages. It exploits people’s “Chicken Little, the sky is falling” fears, demands an international solution, and most don’t understand the science.

Despite the IPCC claims of scientific justification for the Kyoto Protocol it struggled for acceptance. The US Senate voted 95 – 0 against ratification because of job losses and negative economic consequences. Without Russia it would have died, but Putin signed because of economic threats over his membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO). The leaked Climatic Research Unit (CRU) emails only worked because they identified human as well as scientific malfeasance. I have yet to meet anyone who can explain “the hockey stick” or even the greenhouse effect and I’ve asked thousands.

IPCC reaction to lack of public concern or declining government interest is to raise the fear factor, but only as it relates to economic impacts. As the Boston Globe reported on April 16, 2014, “Nations need to take aggressive action in the next 15 years to cut carbon emissions, in order to forestall the worst effects of global warming.” They’ve known from the start that the science is a complete mystery to most and therefore of no consequence. The media ignored the science except as it supported their political bias. Their focus was on greedy industries expanding profits at the expense of the environment.

The answer to the conundrum is that science is not the issue today anymore than it was throughout history. The issue for people and therefore governments is the impact on jobs and the economy, but particularly the individual’s job and money. How else can you explain the irrefutable evidence that all IPCC predictions (projections) have been wrong since 1990? That’s 24 years of failure, yet the latest IPCC claims include even more dire predictions.

The tragedy is the need to reduce CO2 is scientifically unjustified and actually harmful for plants, but neither is an influence. The cost is a massive unnecessary burden with no sign of it being removed except as it impinges on jobs and the economy and maybe we have to settle for that. Ironically, this is another example of the end, stopping CO2 reduction policies, justifying the means, which is why the IPCC created deceptive climate science to identify CO2 in the first place.